If there is any potential left in the UK, it will be destroyed by the BBB/#NetZero agendas, because there is nothing the government and big UK capital is more determined to do than destroy creativity and independence. It may, however, be turned into a rent-seekers paradise.
If Octopus is a 'tech company', I am an Olympic swimmer.
Making apps that ration energy use is not development.
'Invention' that merely takes design briefs from flagship government policy is not R&D, but servicing politics.
The UK government in particular believes 'innovation' (pka R&D) happens because policy mandates it.
One consequence of this is that they funnel large amounts of money to the landlords of 'incubators' -- serviced offices essentially.
Another is that large amounts of money are pumped into organisations that don't really need it, to do things that the government wants... See here for e.g... ukri.org/opportunity/
An example... £12 million quid for projects that may help the government achieve its policy objective of grid storage -- which should surely exist before policy that requires it was drafted.
Firms & others will take the money, but will have nothing to show for it.
This too, you see is a desperate attempt to close the gap between policy ambition and reality.
Because the policy cart was put before the technology horse.
They could have had the R&D competition -- and feasibility and cost-benefit analyses -- before the policymaking.
Are you a woman? If not, self-define as one and have this £50K pat on the head at the taxpayers' expense.
Could you build an AI-powered robot Greta to help catalyse saving the planet through quantum technologies and digital twinning?
If you can pretend that you understand this gibberish, then the government has a £62K cheque with your name on it.
Stop Skynet becoming a humanity-destroying bastard, and you can win £81K!!!
It's so freakin' weird.
Just switch the AI off if it's such a problem.
The environmental sciences are dominated by racists, misogynists, transphobes and homophobes, that the government has set aside £400K for ideological reprogramming.
You see, this is how it works...
The ideological agenda is embedded in the funding streams.
Nobody is going to get any money for research that shows the UK govt's "economics of biodiversity" agenda is ideological bullshit.
But that *is* what's needed.
It's so desperate. It's kind of sad.
Asking 'researchers' to research 'productivity' is like asking drunks to research sobriety.
What do you think they will spend the money on?
Are you a rubbish artist?
Do an art that will only be seen by people who are already terrified of climate change and the government will give you £30,000 of other people's money.
Did you ever wonder why the BBC was so bereft of ideas?
It's because the ideas community has a direct line into the BBC ideas department.
Anyway, there are pages and pages and pages of these offers of public money for 'researchers' and companies in return for alignment with the government's agenda.
The public doesn't get anything in return for them, other than stupid policies and bloated 'research' organisations.
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1. The Quadrature Foundation, which gave a £4 million donation to the Labour Party, and from where the government's new Climate Envoy, Rachel Kyte emerged.
2. The European Climate Foundation, which turns dark money from green billionaires into grants for climate campaigning organisations, including XR. It does not declare who its grantors or grantees are, but is largely controlled by hedge fund billionaire Christopher Hohn.
Quadrature Climate Foundation's (QCF) grants to pro-Net Zero lobbying organisations VASTLY exceeds even Quadrature's alleged holdings in companies that have hydrocarbon energy interests.
It would make no sense whatsoever to fund climate lobbying organisations with more than a $billlion, as QCF has, for the sake of an alleged interest in hydrocarbon companies worth $170 million.
The question you should be asking is about the $billion of pro-Net Zero lobbying and its influence over UK energy policy.
There is a lot more to say on QCF's grantees, including how they create conspiracy theories about the funding of lobbying organisations and donations to political parties.
Here is one example showing how fake philanthropic foundations like Quadrature spend VAST amounts of money on pro-Net Zero lobbying, and how there is ZERO evidence of the contrary -- fossil fuel interests funding anti Net Zero lobbying.
In fact, QCF grantees, InfluenceMap were so bereft of evidence linking fossil fuel interests to anti-climate lobbying that they had to count PRO climate lobbying as ANTI climate lobbying.
"Possible" needed the money because they destroyed their own image when they were called 10:10, and their adverts depicting the executions of children and other climate apostates led to their backers pulling out.
But they were outsourced PR for govt. Always were.
In this video of Cameron and Huhne declaring the greenest government ever, you can see a wonk (who I believe may be a PR for a major wind company) carrying the 10:10 logo, for some bizarre reason.
Preparation for this has been going on for quite some time. By eliding fundamentally distinct categories and even opposing arguments, the disinfo lobby has created the notion of online harms, and thereby the basis for policing political commentary.
Dale Vince claims that "environmental protesting is an act of conscience". But he does not believe in freedom of conscience. He argues that "climate denial should become a criminal offence".
Vince is also trying to use his £millions in libel action against his critics -- Richard Tice, Sean Bailey, and Paul Staines -- who reproduced his moral relativism about "terrorism" in his own words, and to force the Internet blocking of web sites.
He compares the average tariffs for various criminal offenses. But he does not compare the harms caused by those offences, either in economic terms, or deeper emotional and actual injuries caused to people by attempts to immobilise the road network. Those criminal actions were in very substantial part enabled by Vince himself, who admits that he gave the perpetrators "more than £340,000" to enable the expression of their "act of conscience". Who is to say that they are not motivated by money? On whose behalf, and in whose interests did they act? In many parts of the world, Vince would have been in the dock with the protesters for his part in their joint enterprise.
Nobody is against expressions of conscience. But JSO manifestly intended to cause far more chaos than they in fact achieved.
Disrupting the transport network to the extent that Hallam and his co-defendants intended is not the expression of "conscience". They intended to cause material harm to millions of people. They got off lightly.
They claim that they want to help save the lives of millions or even billions of people. But if you point out that JSO's actions, and the policies they demand -- and will continue to demand until they get their way, unless they are stopped -- are more harmful than climate change and its effects, then, Vince argues, you should face prison. And he uses his fortune to lobby for those policies, to fund those violent activists and their legal expenses, to prevent justice and to prevent transparent, democratic and scientific debate.
JSO do not have a rational view of the world. Their claims are not even mainstream "consensus" science. They are radical outliers, further from the consensus even than "deniers". That is why they, and their bleak ideology must be confronted.